


Voltron's Moving Castle

by jamwrites



Category: Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Howl's Moving Castle Fusion, Angst, Coming Out, Gay, Gay Male Character, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Pining Keith (Voltron), Slow Burn, Studio Ghibli, Swearing, True Love, Witchcraft, Witches, Wizards, klance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-16 04:52:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8087971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamwrites/pseuds/jamwrites
Summary: Keith Kogane is content with his quiet life as a hatter. Content, that is, until the day when he is swept away by a mysterious and powerful wizard and cursed by a feared witch. Suddenly grappling with powerful magic he does not understand, Keith must break from the mold of his life and set out to seek his own fortune. Little does he know that outside of his door awaits untold adventure. Soon, Keith is caught up in a high-stakes game of sorcery, magical contracts, war, and love; a game that only he can see through to its conclusion.





	1. In Which Keith Meets A Wizard and a Witch

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy, here we go. This is basically the Howl's Moving Castle film (with some minor influences from the book), but with the Voltron: Legendary Defender characters, focused of course on Klance. Planned to be a ten-chapter fic (I have an OUTLINE, gosh dangit) updated semi-regularly (hopefully) once every two weeks.
> 
> I'm always happy to hear feedback! Come visit me on tumblr @wuhkie if you wanna chat about Voltron or fic or anything really. I always am in need of beta-readers because rn it's just me editing my own stuff, and we all know how that goes. But friends are nice too :)

“You’re a stupid old hat,” Keith said, “and you deserve to burn.” He paused, sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.” 

The sun was giving him a headache. With another sigh, Keith set the half-finished hat down on his work table and glanced up and out the window that spanned the length of his room. The view was rather incredible, which was part of why he liked the space. Beyond the thick glass lay the rest of Market Chipping, clinging to the side of the river like some ancient, cobble-stone and red-shingled lichen. Then there was the river itself, and the Wastes, rising up and away in great stony hills that grew a coat of sparkling frost most mornings, if the weather was right. Though he had seen the view a hundred thousand times, Keith secretly loved it. It looked like home. And it seemed to promise something, as if the hills were beckoning to him,  _ come on, come on, climb us, find out what’s on the other side… _

But there was also an order of three dozen hats that had to be filled by the end of the week, and Keith was the only one working today. 

“Keith!” A loud voice cut through the daydream. Keith sat back on his stool; the men would find him themselves. Sure enough, a gaggle of guys appeared in his door, laughing and boasting and puffing out their chests like proud birds. They were the ones that Keith would loosely call his friends, sort of, but just because they were Shiro’s friends and hung around the shop even when Shiro wasn’t here, which meant that Keith spent a lot of time near them. But they weren’t friends he wanted to talk to, if talking to people had been as easy for him as talking to things. Talking to people was something Keith didn’t understand in the first place. Talking to the guys about drinking and smoking and shooting and girls was something he understood even less. Sometimes, he felt cursed to never understand. Sometimes he felt just plain cursed. 

“Keith!” one said again, grinning from underneath his mustache. “We’re going out to the recruitment booths! What do you say, want to come?”

_ Not really.  _

“Aw, leave off it, Dawson.” Another man behind the first laughed. “We all know that little Keith is too young to sign up.” 

More laughter. The first guy grinned at Keith, fake apology in his eyes. “Sorry man, but Harry’s right. Guess you gotta stay and mind the shop.” 

“That’s fine,” Keith said. “You guys go have fun.” And it was fine: he wasn’t keen on spending an afternoon day-drinking with the guys. He would have liked to walk down to the riverside and see the newly painted warships and the bright banners and write his name on Altea’s Royal Army Registry, but another afternoon in the shop suited him as well. The shop and the hats were something he knew. Something familiar that he couldn’t mess up or turn into an awkward situation.

“Alright, if you’re sure!” The men passed on from the workspace, moving off, departing thunderheads and gray clouds. Keith watched them go, and then turned back to the hats with a sigh.  _ I should be in a barracks right now _ . Shouldn’t he? Wasn’t that his duty to Altea? His mouth tasted bitter. Normal people would love to go out laughing and drinking with the guys, but Keith felt better about a quiet night alone. Even so, he felt a part of him tugging towards the riverside. He had grown used to his responsibility in the shop, the dullness of it. He didn’t mind it. But a small part of him, some childish reserve of optimism, still pictured himself as a soldier, fighting grand battles for King Alfor and Altea. That childish part liked to think he was cursed to remain at the shop forever, and he only had to find a way to break that curse... 

The needle in Keith’s hands slipped and pricked his finger. 

Suddenly, the work room seemed too small to possibly fit all of him into it. Keith needed out. He threw brushed aside a hat that wasn’t in the way, stood, and started walking. 

The air of Market Chipping greeted him like an old friend; it was a beautiful spring day and it seemed that everyone was out enjoying it. Slipping on his jacket, Keith edged his way into the crowd and let himself be caught up. Normally this many people would set him on edge. But today, he liked feeling small, anonymous. He was just a person, nothing strange to look at. Nobody knew anything about him; he was just another face in the crowd. Nobody knew him as Plain Keith, or Lonely Keith, or Keith Who Never Wanted To Go Anywhere That Wasn’t Home Because That Was What Was Expected Of Him. 

“Look! Across the river!” Somebody cried out from the crowd. Dozens of faces turned as one, Keith included; and there it was. Way, way out in the Wastes, a shape walked over a stony ridge, spewing ash into the foggy air. From this far it was almost impossible to make out exactly what it was, but the people of Market Chipping knew: The Castle of Lions. Fabled and feared home of the Wizard Voltron, the Castle of Lions was a half mechanical, half magical construct, a monstrosity of iron and mystery. Keith watched the lion stalk across the ridge before disappearing into the fog. A thrill passed through him.

“Wizard Voltron,” a girl next to him breathed. “We should get inside.”

Another girl giggled. “What, you think Lance wants  _ your _ heart? Please!”

Keith watched the empty spot for another moment, but the castle was gone. He wasn’t sure what he thought about the many rumors; that the Wizard Voltron lured young men and women into his castle and ate their hearts, that he used those hearts to power the castle, that he fed their hearts to a captive demon. Nobody was ever quite sure  _ whose  _ hearts Lance got ahold of, exactly, but everybody was friends with somebody who knew somebody who had fallen prey. 

Shiro would love to worry at him about the Wizard. Keith knew it had been too long since he had gone to visit his brother. Maybe it would him some good. Emphasis on the “maybe”. But Shiro usually was good with talking, good enough to make up for Keith’s awkwardness. Besides, there was a chance he could score some free pastries out of the visit to the bakery where Shiro worked.

The crowds grew thicker the farther Keith pressed into town, but he managed to get on a steamcart just as it was beginning to crawl down the rails. Keith hung on the edge of the door to the cart, and watched as Market Chipping trundled by. The air smelled of soot. And also like fish, and the river, and everything that made home home. Colorful flags hung from signposts and doors. Splashy newspaper headlines announced some sort of crisis. King Alfor was all in a snit over some missing royal princess and was pointing fingers at the neighboring Galra Empire. Airships were mobilizing, flags were being raised. 

_ War. _ The word stood gleaming in Keith’s head. In war, he would be free. _ Free from a life I don’t mind? _ Was that the worst thing in the world? To not mind one’s life? 

But what if he wanted more than that?

What if he was content with not being touched, but dreamt with nervous excitement about holding hands? What if he wanted more than content?

Keith hopped off the cart and turned down an alley. For all of its charms, Market Chipping was haphazard, a maze of twisting roads and alleys that grew like tree roots. And Keith visited Shiro so seldom these days that he had almost forgotten the way. Add that to the fact that he had been paying absolutely no attention, and he found himself wandering a small road between some large buildings that he had never seen before. 

_ Great.  _ Keith sighed and craned his neck, but the shops around him were unfamiliar, the alleyways devoid of any signage. He also couldn’t see the sun in the narrow slits of sky the rooftops offered him, and the ground wasn’t sloping down towards the river. He was well and truly lost. 

“Hello, little mouse.” Keith whipped around; blocking one end of the alleyway were two Altean street guards, all shining buttons and waxed mustaches and pompous grins. One was tall and stocky with a shock of red hair. The other, the one leaning against the side of a building with an easy grin on his face, was handsome in a sort of way that suggested he was well aware of his own attractiveness. 

The handsome soldier spoke again. “Are you lost? Were you looking for the Registry? Fine young man like you should be in the Altean Army!”

“Hang on,” The taller soldier squinted at Keith, and Keith took a step backwards, feeling color rising to his cheeks. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? “Aren’t you Keith Kogane, the hatter’s boy? You are!” The soldier chuckled. “This little boy’s too young to join the Army. How unfortunate.” 

“That’s not the only  _ unfortunate _ thing I’ve heard about Kogane.” Shit, shit, double shit. There was a mischievous glint in the eye of Handsome, who was becoming less worthy of his nickname by the second. He advanced a step, then another, his swagger easy and mocking. “Want to spend the day with me, Keith? I can take you down and show you the ships. Maybe buy you some flowers.” 

“Go away.” Keith tried to turn away, but the bigger, beefier soldier grabbed his arm. 

“Hang on there, Kogane, what if I want a goodbye kiss? Your mullet is so pretty, I can’t resist!”

Keith tugged his arm, but Beefy was strong. His grip was like iron on Keith’s elbow. “I said, go away.” Something like panic sparked in his chest. These guys were just jerks, just idiots, but soldiers could get away with anything--

“Ah, there you are.” Keith was suddenly very aware of a presence at his back. A hand floated down to rest on his shoulder. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, darling. I’m sure these soldiers were just on their way.” 

The soldier’s eyes traveled up, up, up. A hand, sibling to the one on his shoulder, extended from behind Keith and flicked a ringed finger. Instantly, the two soldiers straightened their backs like they had been yanked by a string attached to their heads. The hand flicked again, and the soldiers began to march stiffly away. 

“Hey? What’s going on? What are you doing to us?” They struggled against the invisible force, voicing protests until they turned a corner. All at once, silence ruled the alleyway.

Keith stared. And stared some more. He felt the hand burning a hole in his shoulder until it lifted away.

“Are you alright?” Swallowing, Keith turned to get a look at his saviour. 

Oh, wow.

The color burned in his cheeks.

The man was tall, but unlike Beefy, his frame was lean and powerful. Well-fitted pants and a jacket draped casually over wide shoulders led up to a pointed face, framed by dark brown hair that blew in an invisible breeze. Tiny freckles dotted light brown skin. Keith felt a stupid impulse to touch the freckles, connect each one in a line across their owner’s face. 

His ears pricked with heat. The man was handsome, but more than that, he was...otherwordly. Ethereal. 

Cute. 

“Don’t look now, but we’re being followed.” The man bent to speak in Keith’s air. Where his breath met skin, goosebumps rose. “I would suggest walking. May I hold your hand?”

Words wouldn’t work in Keith’s mouth; all he could manage was a stiff nod. 

The cute boy’s (because he really was that--just a boy, his age, not a man at all) hand threaded through Keith’s, and then they were briskly walking down the alleyway. The boy kept his eyes fixed on an invisible point in front of them, his mouth set in a confident smirk-smile combination. 

They turned a corner, and Keith almost gasped. Shadows were detaching themselves from the sides of building, taking on weight and presence until they became black, moving goo forming into shapes vaguely resembling men. Ridiculously, they wore carny hats. Keith stumbled. 

“What--” he started, but couldn’t find his question. 

The boy tugged at his hand and they turned another corner. “The Witch’s henchmen,” he said, as if that explained it. He sounded so light, carefree, like they were out for a morning stroll and weren’t being chased by what was obviously dark magic. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to go a bit faster.”  

Magic. Was that what was going on here? He  _ had _ mentioned a witch. And now that Keith looked at his feet, he found that the ground was rushing along beneath far faster than their leisurely walking pace would suggest. Keith looked up again and found their way blocked by an oozing wall of the blob-men; over his shoulder, the creatures had filled the alley, too. They were trapped. They were moving too fast, they were going to crash, they were--

The smirk grew a little longer on the boy’s face. “Hang on!” 

All at once, vertigo rose in Keith’s throat, and there was a rushing sensation, and then they were--

\--they were flying! Holy shit. Holy shit, wow, what? 

The boy took Keith’s other hand, raising his hands above his head. “Now, stretch out your legs, and walk,” he said, as if strolling through thin air was the most natural thing in the world.

Keith swallowed, and did as he was told. Amazingly, impossibly, his feet connected with a soft surface that  _ didn’t exist _ , he was walking on air, he was walking on magic!

A little laugh bubbled out of him before he could help himself. Below his shoes, Market Chipping spread out in all its tiny glory; steamcarts wove their way through crowded streets where groups of dancers twirled with their partners. Masses of oblivious people went about their shopping days, clutching bags and parasols and children. The river sparkled, the sun gleamed, and they were  _ flying _ . 

Keith’s foot touched down on the spire of a cathedral, and he pushed off, and they were bounding into the air as if they weighed less than paper. The impossibility of it stunned him. His brain kept trying to work out how this was happening, and coming to the conclusion that it simply was. He had known magic existed, of course, but had known in the way that he knew that boyfriends existed but never expected to have one for himself. 

“Where are we going?” Keith asked, and found that he didn’t have to yell above the wind, because there was none. Just the perfect still air, and the boy’s face very, very close to his own. 

“You tell me.” 

“The bakery,” Keith said, hyper-aware of the boy’s hands holding his. A boy. He was holding hands with a boy, walking in the air. Two impossible things happening at once. “Little Gigi’s. Do you know it?”

“I think I can find my way,” the boy said with a grin. And somehow, they were already there, because they were descending, each step that they took one on a downward staircase. Softly, ever so gently, Keith’s feet came to rest on the upper porch of the bakery building. He turned, and found the boy standing on the edge of the railing as if he wasn’t perched four stories up and in danger of falling to his death.

Keith’s heart beat like a bird’s. The boy extended his hand, fingers slipping from Keith’s in an elegant farewell. His startlingly blue eyes shone with mischief and delight. 

“I’ll lead them away,” he said, coat flapping in new breeze. “But it’s probably best if you stay inside for a while.” 

“T-thanks.” Keith smiled, awkwardly. Why wouldn’t his stupid mouth work? He should say something more than “thanks”, how stupid was that? Come on! Think!

But the boy was already stepping off the porch. With a flutter of bright cloth and a flash of sunlight, he launched into the air and then rocketed earthward. Keith ran to the porch railing and peered down, but only saw the shifting crowd. The boy had vanished. 

 

**

 

“You  _ what? _ ” 

“I told you. I...I flew.” Keith buried his head in his arms, ignoring the probing gaze of his half-brother Shiro. He leaned back against the storage boxes: Shiro had managed to beg a break off of his boss, which really hadn’t been hard because everyone loved Shiro. Keith had seen the girls gather at the front counter when his brother was on register. Shiro practically had to beat the young women off with a stick. 

His co-workers and bosses were only slightly less infatuated. 

“Keith,” Shiro said, his voice filled with concern, “do you even know how much danger you were in? They’re saying the  _ Witch of the Waste _ is back on the prowl, for goodness sake--”

Keith looked up from his arms and said drily, “Well, I don’t think he was a witch, Shiro.” 

“Whatever.” Shiro threw up his arms. “A wizard, then. My point is, you need to be more careful! You could have gotten your heart eaten.” 

He couldn’t help but snort. “Very funny, Shiro. As if any guy would want my heart.” 

“You know that’s not what I meant.” Shiro didn’t know. That Keith wasn’t joking. And Keith did nothing to correct him.  

“It doesn’t matter.” Keith pulled his knees close to his chest. Tried to make himself as small as possible. “I’ll just keep working in the shop. Might as well, since I can’t fight for Altea. I can’t even make myself get a girlfriend.” 

Shiro frowned, and his voice was steel. “You’ll find somebody Keith, I know you will, and she’ll be everything you ever dreamed of. But I’m not asking you to get a girlfriend. All I’m asking is…” Suddenly, all the energy went out of Shiro, and he slumped down until he was on level with Keith. “You’re my little brother, Keith. I just want you to be happy. And careful. That could have been the Wizard Voltron, and he could have eaten your heart. I don’t know what I would do without my little bro.” A little smile crept up on Shiro’s face. “You’ll be eighteen sooner than you think, and then you can go out and protect the country all you want. There will still be wars to fight in in a year. Putting your name in the Registry _ will _ happen.”

“Says the guy whose name is already in it.” 

“I also work at a bakery, and I work here because I chose to. Is that what this is about? If you don’t want to work at father’s shop, you don’t have to.”

“No, I’m happy to work at the shop, really--”

“Because we can find somebody else--”

“It’s fine. It’s just...not that simple.” 

Shiro turned to look Keith full on in the eyes. “Why not? You can talk to me.” 

_ Sure. _ Keith imagined the conversation, minus even the stickiness of the hat shop.  _ Shiro, I’m never going to get a girlfriend, least of all because I’m only a decent person when I’m alone. Most of all because I don’t like girls. _ Yeah, right. 

“I promise I’m okay.” Keith bumped his forehead against Shiro’s. They had used to do this all the time when they were littler, when Father had been too sick to put them to bed. Keith would pretend that touching their heads together would let them share each other’s strength. 

Shiro pulled away. “I have to get back to work. Stay out of trouble for me, little bro.” 

“I’ll try.”

Keith watched as Shiro pulled himself to his feet and headed for the door. He turned around one last time before disappearing. “And stay away from witches and wizards. The time to fight will come. When you do, I know you’ll make everybody proud.” 

Keith didn’t reply as Shiro walked back to the bakery storefront. Instead, he leaned his head back against the crates and stared at the ceiling. The problem wasn’t that he couldn’t fight. It was that he was itching for it. Every part of his skin crawled with the need to slam his fist into something solid. And his thoughts just kept circling back to the same thing:

The boy. The  _ wizard  _ boy. 

Out of all the promises Keith had just made to Shiro, he wasn’t sure which was going to be the hardest to keep. 

 

**

 

Keith made sure to take a steamcart straight back to the shop, having had enough of walking through Market Chipping for one day. The sun was just beginning to kiss the edges of the Wastes as he locked up the front doors to the hat shop, the shoppers scuttling home with their prizes. The old grandfather clock in the back of the shop doled out 7 pm. 

Keith didn’t really mind working in the shop. That much was true. His father had left it to him and Shiro in his will, but Shiro had already become an apprentice baker at that point, a contract that wasn’t easily broken. So, the ownership of the shop had passed down to Keith, the adopted son. The different son. 

Because it didn’t matter what Shiro said. Keith knew he was different, and that that wasn’t something people celebrated. It was something he had come to live with, just like he had come to live with knowing that he would work in the hat shop until he was old: Keith would never fall in love, because love just didn’t happen for people like him. 

Maybe fighting would fix that. Being in a real live war, throwing his life on the line to defeat the evil Galra Empire, even if they had been quiet for decades now. Keith wanted that glory, wanted to make his own destiny, a better one. But he had also grown used to being blind to it. Sometimes it all got caught up in a tangled loop in Keith’s head: did he want to stay in the hat shop because that was what was expected of him as the heir? Or was the work expected of him because he always took it? Sometimes, Keith felt vaguely that another life was pushing against his own, a strange almost-what-if-life. One where he went to seek his fortune, free of the shop, of his father’s will, of his age, of his seemingly cursed love life. To march in a blue and white Altean uniform, fighting in a grand war...that seemed like a life of adventure, at least to him. 

Sometimes, Keith wished he could shed his own body and leave this life behind. If he were somebody else, he would be free of the shop. Free of ghostly expectations, never asked of him but expected nonetheless, free to make his fortune. 

If he had a different body, maybe he would even be worthy of love. 

The little bell above the front door chimed. Keith turned, a customer-greeting smile half forming on his face before he remembered the time of day. 

“I’m sorry,” he said as a shape stepped through the door. “We’re closed…” The words died on his lips as the shape came into the light. It was that of an extremely thin woman, dressed in a shimmering purple-black dress with a neckline that plunged far too low for Keith’s comfort. Something crept up the back of Keith’s neck. Hadn’t he locked that front door? 

The woman’s stick-like fingers dripped with jewels, as did her too-long neck and earlobes, as if her very pores exuded diamonds and emeralds. A massive, fluffy, wide-brimmed hat sat on the woman’s head, casting shadow over very painted lips and eyes. Something about her proportions looked...off. As if she had been set to dry to long in the sun and then stretched out. Keith felt the keys in his pocket. He had definitely locked that door. 

“What a tacky little shop,” the woman said, ignoring Keith’s protest. She strode into the shop, casting her eyes this way and that. Flowing silver hair swished with the bird-like movements of her head. “I’ve never seen such a tacky little hats.” 

Keith bristled: he had made nearly all these hats himself. “I’m sorry ma’am, but we’re  _ closed. _ ” He marched over to the door and held it open.  

“Oh?” The woman turned, seemingly noticing Keith for the first time. Her red lips parted in a toothy grin. “Standing up to the Witch of the Waste? That’s plucky.” 

“The Witch of the…” Shit. Keith’s eyes widened. Was this really her? The Witch had been banished years ago but King Alfor, but there were always whisperings of her showing up in the kingdom anyway--

The Witch’s feral grin widened as she saw the shock probably written all over Keith’s face. And then she was flying at him, her arms spread wide like giant, bony wings, dress flapping behind her. Keith threw up his arms to protect himself and squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for impact. 

A cold, cold wind passed through Keith’s body, as if winter had blown its chilliest breath into his bones. He stumbled, and turned; the Witch was at the door, climbing into a brightly-colored palanquin. 

“The best part about that spell,” the Witch said, her voice dry as crackling autumn leaves, “is that you can’t tell anyone about it. Give my regards to Wizard Voltron.” 

With that, she slammed the door to the palanquin shut, and two blobs of shadow rose from the ground: the same that had chased Keith earlier that day. Without any ceremony, the blob-men raced away into the darkness. 

Keith stood for a moment, staring out the door as it swung shut. Suddenly, he felt tired. More than that, exhausted. The Witch of the Waste. Here, in Market Chipping. In his shop, of all places. The shock of it kept pounding at Keith’s mind, but his brain refused to let it sink in. 

Slowly, slowly, he hobbled across the room. Why did his bones feel like they were grinding against sandpaper? And his back refused to straighten up. And his feet hurt, as well as his neck, his finger joints, his...well, most things in his body, actually. 

_ The best thing about this spell _ ...something insidious swam in Keith’s thoughts. No. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t…what, possible? How many impossible things had he seen today?

On one side of the room was a massive three-mirror installation for customers to view their hats from all angles; Keith hurried over to it and threw open the heavy wooden covering. 

When he caught sight of his face, Keith nearly fell over. 

It was as if reality had short-circuited. His brain refused to understand what it was seeing. Like he had thrown a stone in water and instead of skipping, the stone itself had shattered. A simple rule of logic was being broken.

Because what the mirror was showing wasn’t him. 

It was an old man. 

Keith turned his head. The old man turned his head. He raised an eyebrow. So did the old man. He worried at his jaw, and the reflection did too. 

“That’s really me, isn’t it?” He said to nobody in particular. “I’ve got to stay calm.” As if it would help, Keith hobbled over to the front desk, and then turned around. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe--

He looked in the mirror: the old man looked back. 

“I’ve got to stay calm,” he told himself again, but refused to take his own advice. He was completely at a loss for what to do. He wandered outside, wandered back in. Turned around and went out, came back in. 

Maybe he should just go to bed. Yeah, that was it. The spell would probably wear off by morning. 

Seeing as he had no other ideas, Keith started up the stairs. He was old. He was old. He was  _ cursed _ . The Witch of the Waste had cursed him. 

This was entirely too much magic for one day. What would Shiro say if he was here? Probably something condescending. But what did Shiro know about dealing with witches? What did Keith know, at that rate? All of his ideas of magic were half-formed things, leftovers from stories told as a child. Keith wasn’t magical. He wasn’t part of that world. 

Except for now he was. 

No, Keith was just plain, ordinary Keith. Keith, who worked at a hat shop and would never fall in love. Things like this didn’t happen to him. Nobody met a witch and a wizard in one day, especially not him.  _ Oh, great.  _ That probably had been Wizard Voltron Keith had met earlier today; he certainly had been as dashing as the stories said. 

Go to bed. He should just go to bed. He would know what to do in the morning. 

Thoughts swirling, bones aching Keith began the long trek up the stairs. Though his mind was a hurricane, one thing kept repeating, loud and clear:

_ I am cursed. I am cursed. I am cursed I am cursed I a m c u r  s   e   d    .   .   . _


	2. In Which Keith Is Compelled To Seek His Fortune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith Kogane is content with his quiet life as a hatter. Content, that is, until the day when he is swept away by a mysterious and powerful wizard and cursed by a feared witch.
> 
> Suddenly grappling with powerful magic he does not understand, Keith must break from the mold of his life and set out to seek his own fortune. Little does he know that outside of his door awaits untold adventure.
> 
> Soon, Keith is caught up in a high-stakes game of sorcery, magical contracts, war, and love; a game that only he can see through to its conclusion.

“Keith! Are you in there?”

The first thing Keith noticed upon waking up was that his mouth tasted like mothballs. 

Oh, ow. And that his back still hurt, as well as several joints he hadn’t even known he’d had. He felt like someone had thrown him under the Junction St. steamcar. 

Slowly, painfully, Keith swung his legs out of bed and tottered over to his mirror, wrapping a blanket around him like a cloak to stave off the morning chill. He started at the reflection before remembering--

\-- _ The Witch, flying, cold, a curse, he was  _ old--

\--right. 

The weight of last night’s memories seemed to have settled on Keith’s mind. He had run into the  _ Witch of the Waste _ . He should be counting himself lucky that he wasn’t a bloodstain on the shop’s carpet right now.

Keith looked at himself this way and that, but couldn’t find an angle that made his wrinkles appear any less catastrophically elderly. He sighed, and found that the sound strangely suited this version of him. At least he still had his hair. Well, most of it. His hairline looked suspiciously like it was losing its hold on his forehead. 

“This isn’t that bad,” he told the mirror. In fact, he looked to be in pretty good shape for the age he was in. And his hand-me-down jacket finally suited him. 

“Keith! If you won’t come out, I’m coming in. And I don’t care if you’re not dressed, I helped change your diapers!”

Keith frowned at the door. What was Shiro doing here? 

The doorknob began to turn. Shit! Shiro couldn’t see him like this! There was no way Keith was going to admit he had gotten himself cursed. 

“Don’t come in here!” Keith called to the door. “I think I have a cold!” It was the first lie he could think of. But judging from the sound of his voice, it was a pretty convincing one. Shiro evidently thought so too. 

“Geeze bro, you sound awful. Like some ninety-year-old man.” There was a pause, then the sound of something heavy being set on the floor. “I brought you over some cherry scones; I felt pretty bad about yesterday. About you--what you went through, you know. I’ll just leave them outside the door.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Keith looked at his wrinkled hands. No matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn’t seem to stop them from shaking every so slightly. “Yeah, I’m good,” he said to the door. 

“Alright, if you say so. Stay in bed today, okay? We don’t need you getting any worse; Market Chipping would tear itself apart without its best hatter.”

Keith grunted in response. He listened for Shiro’s footsteps on the old stairs and then the slam of the front door. With a burst of energy, he threw off his blanket, opened the door, and swiped the scones into the room. Keith’s mouth watered as he opened the box. Good gods, these things were amazing. He closed his eyes as he bit into one. As he chewed, he thought. 

There wasn’t much chance that he could stay in Market Chipping looking like this. Well, he could, but he didn’t want to stay old; nobody would even know who he was. 

Keith stopped mid-chew. Nobody would recognize him like this. The thought struck him. 

Nobody would tease him about the army, or his lack of girlfriends, or awkwardness, or plainness. He wouldn’t hear anything about the hat shop and its mundanity because  _ nobody would know he was Keith.  _

A lightness opened up in his chest. He was free. He wouldn’t be expected to run the shop...because he wasn’t Keith. He was just another old man. 

“Alright then,” Keith said to himself. He glanced out the window; the view of the Wastes greeted him, the hills shining in all their morning-frosted glory. He had never been to the Wastes, and he had lived in Market Chipping all of his life. Keith had never even been to the western side of the river. 

His jaw set. He had the day off from the shop, he had a disguise. 

“To the Wastes it is.” Youngest children were always expected to seek their fortune; Keith had never gotten that chance, since he was adopted. Like the old rhyme went: 

_ If you’re youngest, your wealth will be humongous _

_ If you’re middle, go and look a little _

_ If you’re oldest, you better hold fast _

_ And if you’re brought in, support kin _

Keith had always suspected that Shiro, being a single child, had gotten the combined luck of the youngest and middle children, which balanced out the doom of the oldest. And Keith, being adopted--brought in--shared the oldest’s doom to failure, or at least to never surpass Shiro.

But maybe his fortune was not here at the shop; he felt that deep in his chest. Perhaps it was out beyond those hills. Perhaps not. But the only way to find out was to go and see. And besides, he couldn’t put his name down on the Altean Registry looking like this, either. 

Perhaps a tiny part of him also hoped to see the wizard boy again. 

Keith set about the room, gathering food into a carrying basket; a loaf of bread, a large wedge of cheese, several of Shiro’s scones. He considered the tooth-brushing spell powder he had bought on impulse in the market a few weeks ago, and then opted for a regular brush instead. His body had probably had had more than enough of magic for the time being. 

With a timid push to open his door, Keith stuck his head out into the hall of the upper story of the hat shop: all clear. He hurried down the stairs and found that “hurrying” took on a much different meaning at his age. When he passed his workroom, he paused. The hat he had been working on from yesterday, a plain but sensible woven wicker number, sat forlornly on the table. 

“Alright. You can come,” Keith said, and scooped up the hat. He felt a little bad for telling it to burn the day before, and besides, the day looked to be a sunny one. 

Whereas the day before he had crept through the village, today Keith strode. He kept his eyes on the Wastes as he crossed the bridge over the locomotive tracks and caught a faceful of smoke from a passing train. A young boy offered him help down the stairs, and another asked if he needed assistance through the traffic in the main square. 

“No, thank you,” Keith said to both, and hurried away. How strange. Usually when he walked through town he just stared at the ground and kept his shoulders hunched. But now...people were smiling at him as he went. Some even nodded their head and muttered “grandfather” in approving tones. And Keith found himself nodding back. One woman came up and thanked him for his service. It took Keith a minute to figure out she meant in the Altean army; he had beamed with pride the rest of the way out of town. One day, he would deserve that praise. He would walk through Market Chipping with a shirt full of medals.

He would prove that he was good enough.

A few miles later on the bridge crossing the river, Keith found a mule-drawn hay cart going up into the hills. 

“How far you going?” The farmer asked. 

Keith shrugged as he climbed in back with the hay bales. “Just a...a bit farther than you.” 

The cart jostled with every bump in the road and the hay was itchy, but Keith found himself smiling. It felt good to watch Market Chipping grow ever smaller. Like he was finally leaving. 

And to think; yesterday at this time he had been stuck in the shop, acting as the brunt of jokes for the older guys going off to be soldiers. 

The farmer’s house was only a little ways into the hills, so Keith waved goodbye and began his trek in earnest. The farther he went, the steeper the worn path became, but he didn’t mind. The Wastes were a thing of terrible beauty and he wanted to breath it all in. Grasses and wildflowers jutted from the dirt. Rocks ranging in size from his fist to a steamcart peppered the landscape, shining in the late afternoon sun. And when the wind blew, the grasses hissed in something that sounded almost like a language if Keith listened hard enough. 

When his legs began to tremble, Keith stopped for dinner. He lowered himself to the dirt with a groan; his legs felt like they had been washed in a river and beaten afterwards too. And away down the hills, Market Chipping looked suspiciously large. Keith could have sworn he had climbed farther than that. But his eyes told a different story than his feet.

After dinner, there was nothing for it but to keep on. The wind began to pick up the more the sun sank, and soon Keith found himself clutching his jacket tighter around his skinny frame. What little muscle he had managed to build up on his wiry body seemed to have melted away with the effects of the curse. Figured. Shiro had always been a big dude, and Keith had tried for a long time to work to get his muscles to his half-brother’s size. But his body always seemed dead set on being one notch above skinny, nothing more, nothing less. 

Also, the path was getting  _ really _ steep now. Keith was panting from the exertion of the climb. He would have given his little finger for a--

“Walking stick!” He saw the perfect one sticking out of a nearby bush. Thank the gods. He could practically hear his frayed muscles crying out hallelujah. And he didn’t even have to step off the path to pull it out. 

Which...didn’t work. Keith tugged again at the stick, but the bush refused to give it up. 

No, there was no way he was getting beat by a plant. “Come on, you stupid thing,” he spat at the bush, “give me...the...stick!” 

With one final mighty tug, the stick came free, and rose up, and--

\--stood. On its own, and flapping on top of it was a scarecrow. Dressed in a tattered old suit complete with a frayed top hat and stovepipe stuck between its teeth, the scarecrow flapped raggedly in the wind as if it were about to blow away. Its pole, however, was solid and unwavering. 

“You’re not a walking stick!” Keith frowned at the scarecrow. “Thanks a lot, buddy. You don’t even have a right head. It’s just a stupid turnip.” Fine, whatever. He would find something else to help him.

Keith turned and started back up the path. 

_ Thunk, thunk, thunk.  _

He turned again; standing behind him was the turnip-head, looking at him out of its painted on eyes and large grin, out of which stuck a pipe. A day ago, he would have thought the idea of a hopping scarecrow ludicrous. Now the notion only made him tired. 

“Oh no,” he said, backing away. “I’m pretty done with magic, thanks. I only wanted a walking stick.” 

As if in response, Turnip Head hopped forward and bent sideways, so that something slid down from one of its arms and dropped into the dirt in front of Keith; it was a walking stick, complete with a carved bird’s head as a handle. 

“Oh,” Keith looked up at Turnip Head. “Uh, thanks. That’s really helpful.” 

Turnip Head grinned. Or Keith thought it did. He wasn’t sure, with the grin being permanent and all. 

“Uh…” He looked around, not sure of what to do. The sun was setting in earnest now, hurrying away to the other side of the planet. “If you want to find me a place to spend the night, that would be good, too?” If the scarecrow wasn’t going to try to kill him, maybe he could just get rid of it.

With an extra high jump, Turnip Head wheeled around and started bounding away across the Wastes, coat-tails flapping as it went. 

Keith sniggered to himself. He patted the bird on top of his walking stick. “I think I’ve gotten pretty cunning in my old age,” he told it. That took care of whatever tangled up magical problem that thing was into. 

“Well,” Keith said, both to himself and the stick, “onward and upward, I guess.” 

And so he went. 

 

**

 

The Wastes were going to kill him. 

That was what Keith had decided when it had gotten dark and the temperature had dropped off a cliff. And that was before the snow had started falling, and the wind began to howl, which wasn’t good because it seemed to go right through his tired old body. What on earth had he gotten himself into? Seeking his fortune. Yeah, sure. More like seeking his death. At least he saved Shiro the trouble of digging a grave. And a coyote would probably make a nice dinner out of his body. He supposed nobody had said making your fortune would be easy.

Except for Shiro. He got to live in a bakery and make  _ his  _ fortune. 

Keith told all of this to his stick, and the bird head stared back with its beady carved eyes. Like the hats, it was easy to talk to an inanimate thing. Unlike people, he didn’t have to anticipate responses or worry if he was pausing too long in talking or stuttering or making himself sound like an idiot. The stick listened and didn’t judge him, which made it one of his best friends. 

He was considering wrapping himself up in his jacket and just sleeping on the path when four things happened at once.

The first was that his clouded ears picked up a noise other than the blowing wind and scuffing of his boots: _ thunk, thunk, thunk. _

The second was that he smelled smoke, strong enough that it meant there must be a fire nearby.

The third was that Turnip Head appeared over the crest of the hill Keith was working on, and came bounding down towards him. 

The fourth thing was this: 

Behind Turnip Head rose a great hulking shape. It was so unusually large that at first Keith thought it must be a cloud, rising over the hill. But then he heard the clanking and sliding of metal on metal, and saw how the soft light from the moon shown over the figure.

It was Voltron’s Moving Castle. 

The Castle came over the hill and Keith could see it clearly: it was a great machine, or maybe an animal, since it was shaped roughly like a lion, but a lion that was bigger than the biggest building Keith had ever seen. In fact, it looked more like a small mountain. The construction was a cobbled together mess, like a child had thrown together this house and that tower and several pieces of battle ships, wind turbines, and a hundred kinds of steam-powered machines. It was material, but it was  _ living _ . It was haphazard but graceful in its moving parts that slid and squeezed and jostled together to make four moving legs and a swishing tail as long as the main street in Market Chipping. It was breathtaking and it was  _ magic _ . 

Keith stared. He couldn’t help it. He had never seen the castle from any distance other than to make it a speck on the horizon; he had never seen the way the head of the lion moved along organically with the flowing of the muscles of the legs, muscles that were unmistakably muscles even though they were machine parts, belching smoke and smog. He had never seen the great yellow eyes that cast floodlights over the ground and were currently sweeping towards him. He had never seen something more alive. 

“Turnip Head!” He shouted at the scarecrow as it came hopping along towards him, as if shepherding the castle. “I told you to find me somewhere to sleep, not Wizard Voltron’s freaking castle!”  

But if Turnip Head heard him, it took no heed, because it suddenly turned around and started hopping back towards the tail of the lion, which showed no signs of slowing as it approached Keith. With awe, Keith craned his neck back as the lion passed over him, great legs taking seemingly slow steps that covered dozens of meters in a single stride. The feet were perhaps the strangest part; for all the world the rest of the castle resembled a lion, yet the legs slowly tapered down, becoming skinnier and skinnier so as to turn into chicken-like claws, scaled over with rusted steel and red roof tiles and moss. 

He was well and truly underneath the lion now; it had almost passed entirely over him. Yet Keith couldn’t bring himself to move. He was struck frozen.  _ It was real.  _ The castle was real, and huge. And here he was, Keith Kogane, a hatter, standing under it in the Wastes. 

Suddenly Market Chipping felt very, very far away. 

The great tail, which was actually a string of what looked like sections of a stone tower but segmented into a dozen pieces so as to move, swished over him, And there at the very tip of the tail was a tiny wooden door guarded by a yellow burning lamp. It was this door that Turnip Head bounced furiously beside. 

“Is that a way in?” Keith asked, as if Turnip Head would answer. It must be. But the door was already moving away. And he was still standing here!

“Wait!” Keith finally urged his muscles into action. “Slow down! Wait for me!” He began to walk, and then to jog, and finally to run in earnest; the castle really did move a lot faster than it appeared to. Turnip Head flew back and hopped along beside him, silently cheering. Keith made a grab for the wrought-iron railing by the door and snagged it. His feet ran along the blurred ground, but the tail moved as if it possessed a mind of its own, forcing him to weave over and along the uneven ground. 

“Just...freaking...hold...on!” And then for a blessed moment, the tail was still, and Keith felt a pressure at his back: Turnip Head, pressing against him. He used the leverage to push off the ground and finally heaved himself up onto the tiny landing below the door. 

Keith rolled onto his backside, sucking in air. “Thank gods.” He waved at Turnip Head, just before the wind tugged upward at his hat with ghostly fingers and lifted it away. The hat blew off into the darkness. 

“Oh, shit,” Keith mumbled. At once, Turnip Head flew around and began to hop away after the hat. “You don’t have--” There was no use; the scarecrow was already swallowed by the darkness. Keith felt mildly bad for a moment, but then the wind blew at him again, and he remembered that he was cold, so he opened the door and crept inside the castle. 

  
  


**

 

It was like walking into another world. 

With a soft click, the door shut behind him, and right away Keith noticed just how loud the wind had been, because it was so quiet in the castle. And though he had expected a long passageway through the tail, he found that he was at the bottom of a short, plain stair. 

And it was so warm in here, too. He shivered in delight. Should he have been scared? Maybe a little. Instead, Keith find himself smiling thought of seeing the wizard boy again. 

This was probably Wizard Voltron’s castle. He  _ should _ have been scared. 

But then again, nobody would ever steal Keith’s heart. No witch or wizard would want to woo him in all his awkward, sullen, plain-looking glory, so he was probably safe. Doubly so, under his elderly circumstances. One nice thing about being old, Keith supposed, was that nothing frightened him.

And then, as had been his reflex for years, Keith took the golden starburst that was his thoughts about the wizard boy and snuffed it out. No secret stayed hidden by shining. 

Keith took the stairs slowly, and carefully glanced around the room they led into; his first impression was that it was tiny. No more than a cottage, really, and nowhere near the size the outside suggested. There was the door and stairwell he had just come up, and then a square little room with a table to his right that was overflowing with books and dishes and all kinds of magical-looking objects. An open hearth stood to his left, connected to a stair leading up to a second floor straight across the room. Exposed wooden beams ran across the ceiling, shrouded with cobwebs and dangling with mysterious-looking trinkets. In fact, that was a good description for the entire room: extremely dirty and extremely cluttered. 

But it was the fire that Keith was most interested in. Seeing that he was alone, Keith hobbled up the last stair and made for the basket of wood sitting by the stair. He threw a log and then two on the embers. Satisfied, he settled into a stool sitting thoughtfully in front of the hearth.

Heck  _ yes _ . His muscles cried out in glory and delight as he sagged into the chair and closed his eyes. Never before had Keith loved a chair so. He never wanted to leave this beautiful, beautiful chair, or this beautiful fire that was crackling to life and warming the Wastes right out of him. 

“Well, that appears to be one nasty little curse you’ve got there.” Keith snapped his eyes open. 

And the fire looked back. 

Had it just...spoke? He squinted. “Are..are you Voltron? I mean--well--the Wizard?” Stupid mouth. He had nattered away to his walking stick all afternoon and now he couldn’t even string a sentence together. And the longer he looked, the more there appeared to be some sort of face in the fire: two blue-burning dots for eyes, a slash of blue fire for a mouth. 

“No sir,” the fire said, affronted. “I am an extremely powerful fire demon by the name of Coran, at your service, young sir. Well, actually, I’m not. I just like to say that.” 

Suddenly, Keith’s head hurt. This should have been weird to him. It should have. Talking fires weren’t normal. 

“Let me take a little gander.” The fire popped and hissed, its face swaying back and forth as if checking Keith from all angles. “Your curse won’t allow you to talk about it, eh? Pretty standard stuff. Yessir, you’re going to have a lovely time breaking that one!” 

“A...fire demon?” That rang a dusty old bell somewhere. Keith dimly recalled learning about varieties of demons in school, though the finer points of that knowledge was long gone, except... “If you’re--well--a demon, you can, uh, you know, help me break my spell, right?” It was easier to talk, Keith found, if he focused on the mask of old age he wore.  _ He can’t see me. I’m an old man. It’s okay. _

“Well, that’s a little tricky, see. Maybe I can, maybe I cannot. Perhaps I could work something out…” The fire--Coran, it had called itself--reached and broke off a twig from a long and chewed it as if working on a cigar. “How about this: if you break the spell that’s on me, I can break the spell that’s on you.”

Huh. The longer he looked, the more Keith thought the some darker orange fire above Coran’s mouth suggested a mustachio of some sort. 

Maybe the fact that the fire had just confirmed that this castle did, in fact, belong to the Wizard Voltron should have alarmed him, but right now he was just so tired, and the fire felt so nice in his bones…

_ Be careful.  _ Keith’s education waved a flag in his head. _ This is a demon you’re dealing with.  _

“How do I know you’ll keep up your end of the deal?” Keith narrowed his eyes at Coran. 

The fire jumped indignantly, and tiny little flame arms appeared to groom what Keith had definitely decided was a mustachio. 

“How insulting! I’ll have you know I used to work for the King himself! Not that that was all it was cut out to be. And you should feel sorry for me, the way Lance treats me. Like I’m his slave! Do you know how difficult it is to move an entire castle? Oh, and not to mention heating water and keeping the cold out and avoiding potholes…”

Keith’s eyes were getting heavy, and Coran’s voice seemed to be made up of calming pops and hisses from the flames. Maybe it was his curse, or maybe it was just the fact that he had hiked very far that day, but the fire was very nearly a lullaby. 

“Fine, whatever,” Keith said, slumping down into the chair even farther. “I’ll help you. It’s a deal.” What harm could come of it? He would get cursed again? Fat chance. Though Keith had heard plenty of warning tales about making deals with demons, he hardly thought his situation could get worse. If by some miracle he did manage to break Coran’s spell, well. All the better for Keith. 

And then, unlike those so many nights when Keith had tossed and turned for hours, sleep found him swiftly. It came on soft wings and carried him away to dream vivid dreams that he wouldn’t remember come morning. He had made it across the Wastes. He had made it out of Market Chipping. It had only taken seventeen and a half years, but he had made it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2!! WOW, thank you everyone for such amazing, kind, inspirational comments (plus the kudos and bookmarks and subscriptions!). It really makes my day to see people enjoying my story! I feel like I say "thank you" a bajillion times and it gets old but again: thank you, honestly, you're all amazing. 
> 
> Good news: the fic will be updating once a week now!
> 
> Please let me know if there are tags I'm missing or should have or if you feel the rating isn't appropriate!
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://www.wuhkie.tumblr.com) and say hi :)


	3. Which Sees the Castle Explored and Cleaned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ringing of the shop door yanked Keith from his dreams.
> 
> Blearily, he opened his eyes and reached over to his bedside table for the cup of water he always kept there, but his hand passed through empty air. In fact, his entire body followed the swing of his hand and Keith found himself tipping off a chair and towards the floor.
> 
> He caught himself just in time, managing to right the stool he was sitting in.
> 
> The shop. He wasn’t in the shop.
> 
> He was in Voltron’s Moving Castle.

The ringing of the shop door yanked Keith from his dreams. 

Blearily, he opened his eyes and reached over to his bedside table for the cup of water he always kept there, but his hand passed through empty air. In fact, his entire body followed the swing of his hand and Keith found himself tipping off a chair and towards the floor. 

He caught himself just in time, managing to right the stool he was sitting in. 

The shop. He wasn’t in the shop. 

He was in Voltron’s Moving Castle. 

“Wonderful,” he mumbled to himself. Last night seemed as foggy as a dream, like it had been someone else who had found a hopping scarecrow and climbed inside a castle and made a deal with a fire demon. 

For the briefest of moments, Keith felt a pang of longing for his room back in the hat shop. But then he quickly corrected himself. He had spent all his life wondering what was outside of that place, and now that he had found it, he wasn’t going let himself get all sappy about what he had left behind. This was adventure. This was seeking his fortune. This was--

“Somebody’s at the Porthaven door.” The fire sprang to life before Keith at the same moment the bell rang again. There was a muffled, shout of “I’m  _ coming! _ ” from what must have been upstairs, followed by the rapid pounding of feet on the steps. Keith let his head sag backwards and closed his eyes like he was sleeping again; maybe it was best if he didn’t make an entrance. He was in a wizard’s castle, after all. No telling what kind of danger he was in. And it wasn’t very well like he could go and hide; he could barely bend over to tie his shoes. 

Of course, he hadn’t felt all that in danger with Wizard Voltron the last time he had met him. 

“Just hold on, will you?” The voice had found its way down the stairs and was now talking at the fire from behind Keith. The urge to turn around and look at its owner was almost unbearable. There was the sound of rustling cloth and peculiar feeling of static electricity raising the hairs on Keith’s neck. Another voice, this one much shakier, somehow more frail: “Huh? Who’s this? How’d he get in here?”

“The  _ door _ , Pidge.”

“Right, okay, I’m going.” 

Keith cracked his eyes open and saw that a tiny old woman was answering the door; in it stood a fat man dressed in suit and sash, holding an official looking letter. 

And beyond him was a city. 

“The time has come for war!” The fat man thrust the letter at the hooded figure. “His Majesty Alfor requires that every witch and wizard fight for Altea. Wizard Jenkins must report to the palace immediately.”  

_ War _ . A shiver of excitement passed through Keith’s body as he got up to give Coran a log. Was it actually starting? If he didn’t move fast and get this curse lifted, he was going to miss it! 

And he  _ wasn’t _ going to miss it. Some time in the night, Keith had made up his mind: when he got rid of this curse, he was going to sneak into the Army, go right past the stupid Registry. He was going to fight, and nothing was going to change that. After a trek through the Wastes, a curse, a fire demon, a spelled scarecrow and a wizard, the Registry seemed like a small thing to be stopping him. Just a piece of paper, really.

The little figure nodded and accepted the letter, then showed the man out with a few kind words. Stuffing the letter into a pocket, she came hopping up the steps and looked at Keith eyes both pointing different directions.

“What do you think you’re doing here, grandpa?”

Keith stuck out his bottom lip. “Coran said I could come in.”

“I did no such thing! He just wandered in from the Wastes!”

“The Wastes?” The little old woman reached for the hood behind her head and tugged the cloak up and over. Keith blinked. Standing in her place was a young girl, maybe only thirteen or so years old. Her excessive shortness made it easy to look at her head, which sprouted a tangle of mousy blond-brown hair that looked like it had lost a fight with a pillow, and her round face was framed with overlarge spectacles. She raised an eyebrow at Keith.

“If you’re from the Wastes, how do I know you’re not a wizard?”

Coran flared up with indignance. “I would never let another wizard in here! On my honor! Although I did have to blow a nasty fire charm out of his hands.”

Keith frowned at the fire. “What? I’ve never owned a fire charm in my life.”

“Whatever. As long as it’s gone now.” Pidge threw the letter into a massive book on the oaken table. The little bell over the door chimed. 

“Porthaven door, once more,” Coran called. 

Pidge turned on her heel and, tugging up her hood to transform into an old woman again (the hairs on Keith’s neck stood at attention), went down and tugged open the door. This time a little girl stood in the frame, and Keith could get a much better look at the world beyond her. 

“I’m here to pick up a sailing spell,” the little girl said as Keith got up from his chair. How was this possible? He was in the moving castle, wasn’t he? 

But as he took a few shuffling steps forward, he saw that that assumption was wrong. The view out the door was definitely a city. He passed the little girl, who Pidge was leading into the house, and stuck his head out into the morning light. 

The smell of the ocean assaulted his nose, all fish and salt and seaweed. The glare of the sun took several seconds to get used to before he could see: Keith was in a busy town, through which drove steamcarts and horse-drawn carts carrying people of every variety. Vendors called out from stalls set up in front of brightly painted, chipped plaster buildings, and way down in the harbor boats rested in the water. 

“Porthaven,” Keith breathed. This was definitely Porthaven. Not the Wastes, and not the castle, either. 

“That’ll be one copper,” he heard Pidge say to the girl, which was ludicrous. Keith had payed almost five times that for his useless tooth brushing powder. A sailing spell was surely worth more than some stupid cleaning powder, and definitely not less.

“Are you a wizard?” Keith looked down and found the little girl tugging on his jacket sleeve. He stammered. 

“Oh, uh…yeah, you bet.” A slow smile came to his face. He was just a little old man, after all. Nobody remarkable. “I’m the scariest wizard in the whole world!” 

The little girl squealed and then giggled in delight, and ran out from under Keith’s legs into the street. He waved goodbye to her, chuckling. Normally children just steered clear of him and his sour expressions. And when he had been young enough to play, nobody liked him because he threw rocks too hard. 

“Move it grandpa, or you’re gonna lose your nose.” Pidge came up beside him and rapped her fingers expectantly on the door. Keith withdrew obligingly, but not without shooting her an evil eye. “And quit telling lies to our customers.”

Keith frowned. “What about you? You’re the one wearing disguises.”

“That’s different! I’m just practicing my magic.”

Keith  _ ha-rumphed _ , and tottered back up the steps. No sooner had he reached the top step--there were only five, but it felt like fifteen--than the bell rang again.

“Kingsbury!” Coran called. 

Keith turned around just in time to see Pidge do something strange with the door handle. A little wheel hanging on top of the door he hadn’t noticed before moved: an arrow pointed at a fixed point on the wheel, which was painted in equal sections black, red, green, and blue. The marker had been on blue, but with Pidge’s finagling the wheel jumped to red. 

“Good day,” said a new man at the door. This one was dressed in a magnificent officer’s uniform, and his hair was done up in what must have been a fashionable style. He bowed low to Pidge. “Would this be the residence of the great Wizard Pendragon?”

“It is.”

“I bear an invitation from His Majesty the King Alfor. Please tell Pendragon that all witches and wizards…”

Keith lost interested in the babbling as the man went on: it was the sights beyond him that were peculiar. He squinted and went back down the steps just as Pidge was accepting another royal invitation for war. 

This time, the view out the door was all gleaming golden rooftops and gold-leafed columns that stretched up to the sky. Droning airships filled the clouded sky and even the streets themselves were cobbled with fine white brick: it was Kingsbury, the capital of Altea, somewhere Keith had dreamed of coming for military training one day. He looked at the little dial by the door, and then back outside. Closing the door, he decided to experiment. It took one twist of the knob backwards to switch the dial back to blue: he opened the door and found Porthaven waiting. Another twist switched to green: outside sat the harsh landscape of the Wastes. 

Keith wheeled around, a grin growing on his face. “This is a magic house, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Pidge flashed him a proud smile from her perch at the table. “But stop messing around or you’re gonna break something.”

“Where’s the black blob lead?”  
“Only Master Lance knows that.”

Keith took a moment to absorb this information. The door was a portal leading to several different locations, all of which their house managed to inhabit at once. The prospect of it made his head spin. And he had thought that his curse was serious magic. This Wizard Voltron must be even more powerful than he thought. 

He tried to match that idea up with the man he had seen. They had walked through air together, but Voltron had seemed so... _ normal _ . Just a boy. 

Not at all like somebody who would go around eating hearts. 

Keith made the trek up the five stairs again to find Pidge rummaging around on the table. 

“There’s gotta be something to eat around here,” she said, pulling open several drawers and being rewarded with a hunk of bread and a moldy bit of cheese. 

“Don’t you want some bacon?” Keith knew he did; he felt like he hadn’t eaten for days. Right now some of Shiro’s homemade bacon sounded amazing. “Or eggs?” 

“Can’t,” Pidge said, fishing around for a plate and finding one. “Coran won’t let us cook on him.” 

Keith eyed the fire. “Yeah, we’ll see about that. Find me some bacon, will you?”

“You’re wasting your time,” Pidge said, but nonetheless reached into an icebox and pulled out several slices and some eggs to boot. It took a minute of looking for Keith to find a frying pan, but it was a good sturdy one. There was no way he was going to go without a good breakfast after a day-long hike in the Wastes in this body. 

“Alright Coran,” he said, standing over the fire. “You ready?”

“No-sir-ee, I don’t think you understand--”

It was way too early for this. “Should I pour some water on you? Maybe that’ll make you come around.” He smirked. “Or maybe I should tell Wizard Voltron about our little bargain?” 

“What? You wouldn’t dare!” Coran shied away into the logs, and Keith seized the opportunity to slam the cooking pan onto the flames. 

Coran was a huge baby about the whole thing. He hissed and spat like he was burning wet twigs, and went on about he was a dignified fire demon, a proud magical being, not some bacon slave. But Keith was hungry, and there was bacon to be cooked. He felt Pidge’s eyes staring at him in awe over his shoulder. 

“Coran’s doing what you asked…?” 

Maybe he should have stopped there, but Keith couldn’t help himself. “Do you have a kettle around here? Tea would be great.” 

“S-sure.” Despite Coran’s protests, Pidge went hunting for the kettle, knocking down several heavy-sounding objects in the process. 

Keith felt a golden sense of calm wash over him. It was sort of like when he was sewing hats, but this was...different. He didn’t feel like he had to make himself small or invisible, or like he had to be ashamed about anything. The curse was a blanket; something he could wrap himself in and have it be a shield against all monsters. Or even worse: people.  

“Here’s another curse for you,” Coran grumbled. “May all your bacon burn.”

Said bacon was just beginning to sizzle when the front door drifted open. 

“Master Lance! You’re home! The King’s messengers just showed up.” Pidge jumped up from her spot behind Keith, and Keith almost dropped the frying pan. For a second he had nearly forgotten that this was the Wizard’s house. “They want you to go to the Palace as Pendragon and Jenkins. We’re totally screwed!” 

Keith slid his eyes ever so slightly over: and there he was. The boy from the other day, trudging up the steps from the door, which was closing on a background of pure darkness. It didn’t escape Keith’s notice that the dial was just sliding off the black section of the dial.

The boy, or Wizard Voltron, looked exhausted: deep bags circled his eyes, and his posture was stooped like a wilting plant. However, he seemed to transform in front of Keith’s eyes; as he walked into the house, the Wizard straightened up and his skin brightened visibly. An easy grin appeared on his face, which Keith couldn’t help but think of again as cute. And he  _ was _ attractive, all sharp lines and freckled skin and big ears that stuck out endearingly.

_ He’s cute. _ Keith let himself think it again. He was undeniably attracted to the wizard boy, or Jenkins or Pendragon or Lance, whoever he was. 

The thought settled in his mind like a stone dropped in water. With tentative wonder, Keith turned it over and over. He was attracted to this boy. Something strange and exciting moved under his belly button. He allowed himself to close his eyes for a moment.

Keith had known for a long time that he wasn’t going to marry a woman, as was expected of young men. Or that if he did, he wouldn’t take much joy from it. It had taken him a long time to figure out, as if he were decoding some hidden message without a translator. His only clues were the lingering looks he would find himself giving boys that came in the hat shop, the heat he felt in his face whenever he and Shiro would go down to the river to swim and one of their friends stripped away his shirt. Looks from boys sent electric thrills racing through his gut. For the first fourteen years of his life Keith lived in ignorance, not knowing what was wrong with him, why he didn’t understand the crude jokes guys made about women with an alien single-mindedness. 

Keith had always consoled himself with the thought that when he was older, he would change. This...whatever it was, would pass. But as he grew, it only got worse, and his confusion and hurt and feelings were forged into something powerful: a secret. With age came the knowledge that he had something to hide. That a part of himself was to be locked up and hidden away and never talked about, not  _ ever _ , not with anyone. Even Shiro. 

So Keith carried the little ball of hardened and hidden feelings. It weighed in his pocket always. Perhaps, he thought, this was why it was so easy to keep his secret about his present curse, why acting out a part came so naturally to him: it had been his entire life. He should be good at it, because he lived it. 

Lance looked at Keith, and the effervescence in his eyes evaporated Keith’s daydreaming like dew.  

It took all of Keith’s willpower not to jump out of his skin. It was okay, Lance didn’t know who he was, Keith was old, after all. But it was strange, even so. Keith knew that this boy had saved him and that they had flown together, but seeing him again made it even more real. There was no denying it now. 

Voltron’s--Lance, Pidge had called him (and it seemed as though he went by several other names as well)--Lance’s eyes hovered on Keith for just a moment before moving on to Coran.

“Coran?” Lance asked, ignoring Pidge’s news. “What the heck are you doing?” 

“He bullied me.” Coran sank into the logs, all in a huff. “I should never have let him in here.” 

Talk. Keith should talk now. He coughed into his elbow. “Hi-hello. I’m Keith, your new cleaning man. Coran hired me,” he added weakly. 

“Huh, alrighty then.” Lance shrugged and slid his hand over Keith’s. Electricity shot up Keith’s arm. “I’ll do the cooking though; I’m known to make a mean breakfast hash. Get me six more eggs, will you?”

Keith nodded in mute dumbness, still reeling from the touch. He silently handed Lance the eggs, which he cracked with one hand, feeding the shells to Coran. Could Lance recognize Keith? He was only old, after all, not a different person altogether. But no; nobody else had noticed him in all of Market Chipping. Not that Keith had ever made much of an effort to get out and socialize, but still. 

“Do we even own any plates, Pidge?” Lance looked up from the eggs, which were just about finished. 

“Maybe, but only if we use the term ‘plates’ liberally.” Keith got up to help Pidge find them. The best they could come up with was a cracked but normal-sized plate, one tinier one, and a shallow bowl. Lance scooped a good helping of bacon and eggs onto all their dishes, then gave the leftover grease to Coran as well. 

Pidge grinned at him and stuck out a fist with two grubby spoons and a fork. “Which do you want? You only get one ‘cause the rest are even dirtier.” 

With ginger hands, Keith accepted a spoon, and began to dig into his eggs. Lance hadn’t been lying about his skills; the eggs really were delicious. Maybe not on Shiro’s level, but his brother was hard to beat when it came to food. 

The three of them ate in half-awkward, half-amiable silence for a minute or two. Pidge shoveled food into her mouth like she hadn’t eaten for a week and wouldn’t again for two, and Lance wasn’t far behind her pace. Keith snuck glances at Lance every now and again. He couldn’t seem to help himself. He just had a face that Keith liked to look at. And his shoulders, underneath the pink and purple patterned jacket that rested on them, were wide, and his hands looked so much like hands he would like to hold again...

“So,” Lance said, mouth full of bacon. A little dribble of egg yolk trailed down one stuffed cheek. “Whatcha got hiding in your pocket, Keith?” 

Huh? Keith’s hand flew to his jacket pocket--there  _ was _ something in there. He drew it out and found that it was a little piece of folded red paper. Hands eternally trembling, he handed it across the table to Lance.

The room went white. 

A flash of fire erupted from where Lance’s hand touched the paper, followed by the same peculiar sizzling of static electricity Keith had felt earlier when Pidge had worked her tiny magic. Keith practically jumped out of his pants, and even Lance let out a little yelp. The red paper fluttered to the floor, but that wasn’t what they were all staring at: it was the scorch mark on the table, some strange rune that Keith didn’t recognize. 

“What’s it say?” Pidge pushed her glasses back up her nose, already kneeling on her chair to get a better look. 

Keith watched Lance carefully. His heart was still beating from the surprise of the magic, but Lance looked...frightened. His lips moved as he stared at the rune like he was reading from a book, and his skin had paled several shades. 

“ _ Go and catch a falling star _

_ Get with child the mismatched mind _

_ Tell me where all the past years are… _ ” Lance stopped abruptly and glanced up, as if he was realizing he was talking out loud. 

“Lance?” Pidge’s voice was barely above a whisper. It was the sort of situation where whispering seemed appropriate. “What does that mean?”

It took Lance only a second to pull himself back, and then that easy, lopsided smile that Keith was beginning to suspect was permanent was back on his face. “Nothing. The Witch of the Waste is just trying to be clever.” He looked down at the blackened rune. “I don’t think that’s very good for our table.” 

Lance stood and pressed his palm to the table, on the edge of the rune, and swept slowly over it as Keith and Pidge shared a look that held the same meaning:  _ The Witch of the Waste? _ But there was no time for questions: the air charged with energy again, the feeling Keith probably thought meant  _ magic _ . Lance’s hair floated slowly higher, and his eyes shown, and then--

His hand dropped away, and the table was unmarked. 

“I’m gonna go take a bath. I think I can smell myself and it’s grossing me out.” Keith rather liked the way Lance smelled. A mixture of deodorizing powders and soap and something unmistakably boy-y. 

Wiping his hand on his pants as if nothing had happened, Lance turned and started up the big staircase, taking the steps two at a time. He called from the upper floor, “Coran, be a bro and move the castle sixty miles west. Oh, and as long as you’re at it, heat up some water!” 

“Oh, yes, of course,” Coran muttered. “Glad to see everyone’s remembered little old me in the fireplace.”

Pidge rounded on Keith, her eyes hard but inquisitive. “The Witch? As in, the Witch of the freaking  _ Waste? _ Are you sure you’re not working her? Because if you are--” 

Keith bristled at the prospect. “Are you kidding me? I would never work for that old hag! She’s the one who--” 

And then it was as if his mouth had forgotten how to speak, or his tongue had a spasm, or his lips refused to open quite right. It wasn’t that Keith couldn’t move his mouth; it was that his mouth was flipping each command upwards and over end and then on its side.  _ She’s the one who made me old!  _ But try as he might, the words wouldn’t come out. 

Frustration bubbled like black tar. He slammed his fist on the table, finally giving it up. Fine! Let her have her stupid fun. If he ever got his hands on that Witch, he was going to wring her scrawny little neck. 

“Finish your breakfast,” he ordered Pidge, and irritably set on his eggs like they had cursed him, too. 

 

**

  
  


After breakfast, Keith decided he had better get to work; he had said he was a cleaning man, and he needed a reason to stay in the castle long enough for Coran to break his curse. The sooner that got broken, the sooner he could run away to join the Altean Army. So, for the time being, cleaning seemed to be the best course of action to get him there. 

And there was plenty of cleaning to do. Keith had noticed some filth when he had come in the night before, but he had been tired and the room dark; in the full light of day it was even worse that it had seemed. The cobwebs didn’t just run between the wooden ceiling beings, they blanketed them. The walls were a hodgepodge of chipped plaster and peeling wallpaper and crumbling brick, all of it stained with liquids that might have been magical or otherwise. The floors were a splintered, dusty disaster, and Coran’s hearth was filled to overflowing with ashes. 

And, laying over all of it, was the clutter. 

It lay in layers, clutter upon clutter, in such voluminous heaps and quantities such as Keith had never seen before. There were potion bottles, glittering charms, dirty dishes, piles of clothes, crumpled pages of parchment, and letters strewn over everything with no order whatsoever. There were muddy shoes and molding food and mouse nests, spider webs and grimy window panes and a small sink in one corner filled with dirt and growing several wild shrubs. 

And, in the greatest quantity of all, were the books. Books large and small, stacked in haphazard piles or thrown pages-down on whatever surface was available. Some books were used as valuable flat surface space themselves for candles whose dried wax dripped all the way to the floor. Books of every color and width and shape and script and topic, upon which were stacked mugs or kitchen utensils or more books. The castle-house looked kind of like his work space, Keith thought, if a bomb or two had gone off in it. 

Simply looking at all this quicked Keith’s heart into a nervous beat. There was a part of him that liked everything neat and tidy and tucked away in its place, and that got upset whenever the world wasn’t like that, which was almost always. It was a nagging little feeling, an unignorable urge, or tic, or want to clean the messiness away. 

So it was with newfound vigor that Keith began his war with the dirt. It was hard to pick a point to dive in, but after seeing that he was very nearly leaving footprints in the dust on the floor, his disgust propelled him to choose it as his first battleground.

Families of mice ran before the crashing wave of his water bucket and then the onslaught of his mop, mercilessly scrubbing at the floor. He kicked around the table and chairs to get underneath those too, scrubbing harder than ever.  _ Stupid Witch _ , he thought. What right did she have to do this to him? An hour later and he had covered the entire room. The floor finished, he moved on to dusting the rafters, tying a cloth around his face to keep from choking on the cobwebs.  _ She thinks she can just waltz into any old shop and throw out curses?  _ Spiders fell before his attacks.  _ Not at me. I won’t take it.  _ He imagined every speck of dirt and dust an enemy Galra Empire soldier, his broom handle a mighty weapon with which to kill them. 

The day wore on, marked by the ticking of the many clocks on the shelves and the movement of the sun across the floor. Keith’s joints ached. Prickles of sweat dripped down his forehead. But cleaning felt like  _ doing _ , like by dusting the windows, he was somehow taking out a revenge on the Witch. 

“Keith,” Coran said some time later, when Keith had moved on to emptying the ash out of the hearth. Judging by the mountains of the stuff, Keith guessed the fire hadn’t been emptied for a year or two at best. “Keith, I implore you. I’m slipping.”

“Oh, you’re fine.” 

Using a garden hoe he had found, Keith began scraping the ash onto a dropcloth. He had temporarily rehoused Coran in a bucket with several logs to munch on. The fire demon would be perfectly safe until Keith had finished. 

“Keith, this is-this is serious. I’m going to go out.”

“Almost there, just hold on.” 

Keith glanced at Coran; his log had burnt rather low, and the demon was hanging on by only his “arms”, in danger of falling into the bucket. There was some sort of heavy, dark object in the belly of Coran’s fire that seemed to be weighing him down, but Keith gave it no mind. Probably some weird fire demon thing. 

As he was scraping out the last of the embers and ash, something clunked into the bucket, and smoke began billowing out. Keith reasoned it was just Coran throwing a fit. What a big baby. 

At that moment, someone kneeled down just at the edges of Keith’s peripheral vision and reached into the bucket. 

“You know, if you could try not to torment my fire demon, that’d be great.” Lance scooped out the dark lump, ringed with blue flames, and blew. A whiff of magic touched the edges of Keith’s skin, and Coran blazed brighter. Tossing a few logs into the now-clean hearth, Lance gently put Coran down onto the wood, then stood to smile at Keith. Damn. His face when he smiled…and he smelled so good, too. He must have just gotten out of his bath. How long of a bath had it been? Hours?

Lance picked at an invisible spot between his perfect teeth, completely ruining the dazzling smile.. “I’m going out. Try not to kill Coran while I’m away!” 

When the door shut behind Lance, it seemed to break some sort of spell. Keith blinked. He had definitely  _ not _ just been watching Lance’s butt. Definitely not. 

“You know,” Coran was back to his normal size, blazing away on the logs. He looked rather upset. “If you kill me, Lance dies too.” 

“Jeeze, you weren’t going to die.” But Keith was still watching the door, not paying attention to Coran, trying to ignore the queasy, jumping, golden starburst in his stomach. This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t going to let this happen. Keith had played this game before and knew how it ended. 

So, instead of thinking, he went back to war. 

The ground floor freed of at least one layer of grime, Keith thought he might take a look at what he was working with upstairs. Making his way to the steps, he began making piles of dirty clothes (just lying around, of course) to wash later. As he went, he pulled out anything in the pockets so it wouldn’t get ruined in the washing. If it looked like something magical, he threw it in a jar on the desk (mostly it was just papers with cryptic writing). 

“What are you doing down here? Wait, are you coming upstairs?” Pidge appeared on the railing, her eyes wide with panic. Her voice dropped with horror. “Are you going to clean  _ my  _ room?”

“Yup. Anything you don’t want cleaned you’d better hide.”

That sent Pidge sprinting up the steps. “Do my room last!” 

Keith followed her, itching to see the rest of the house. He had no idea what he was dealing with here; was there really an entire castle, or just a little cottage? What if doors just kept leading to more doors and the house never ended? 

What he found at the top of the stairs was more mundane. A little landing led to a few more steps that opened into a cramped and crooked hallway. There was a spattering of doors on both walls that, upon inspection, revealed a closet, a remarkably dirty bathroom, another closet, and two locked doors that must have been Pidge and Lance’s rooms. Keith also saw that the hall turned away in an “L” shape. 

He frowned. Hardly something anyone would call “grand” or worthy of a castle, but the beams of the ceiling were thick and sturdy and made of good wood, as was the floor. The plaster walls were chipped and in need of a new coat of paint, but the house  _ was  _ charming. He supposed. Maybe, Keith thought, there was something more magical at the end of the hall. 

Setting down his mop and bucket, Keith decided to investigate, and was rewarded with another door. There was a tiny window set in the center, but the glass was so dirty Keith couldn’t make out what was beyond. He grabbed the knob. 

“If this leads me to another dimension,” he said to himself, “I’m going to be pissed.”

He pushed through, and nearly fell from the castle.

The wide world opened up before him like a god of the wild opening its endless maw. Wind ripped at Keith’s clothing and he staggered, catching himself just in time on a thin railing. He had emerged onto a tiny porch that clung to the outside of the great moving castle-lion, just one of the many jumble of buildings and architectural oddities that made up its body. Once he was sure he wasn’t going to fall, Keith looked out. 

He was hundreds of feet from the ground, which moved by in a blue-green blur beneath him, so quickly that it spun his head. The castle was walking along the ridge an endless meadow, covered with waving grasses tall enough to sprout seeds at their tips. Wild beasts ran alongside the feet of the castle like dolphins would a sailing ship. And the mountains; the mountains were great jagged mirror shards, or stalagmites that had accreted from the tears of the sky. The sky! The sky seemed as deep as an ocean. 

Keith felt swallowed by the grand immensity of it. Oh, he had known of the beauty of his country Altea; it was legendary, after all. But it was one thing to hear of it and another to see it. Tears pricked his eyes, but he couldn’t tell if it was the biting wind or the swelling of joy in his chest.  _ This _ above all things must be what freedom was.

It was as if he had never been old at all; Keith turned with alacrity and sprinted through the hall and down the steps and caught himself on the bannister, panting, his lungs still full of the great chill wind. 

“Coran!” He shouted, unable to keep himself from smiling. “Are you doing this? Are you moving the castle?”

The fire popped. “I should certainly hope so. Otherwise the Witch is going to make a fine meal out of all of us before sunset.”

“Well, you’re amazing! You’re a first class fire demon and I like your spark!” 

The effect his words had on the fire was instantaneous: Coran flared up, his tips turning sunset shades of purple and pink. “You like my spark? I dare say, that’s quite a compliment! Ha! You like my spark!” The fire burned higher and higher until it was almost the shape of a man, his great arms straining against the ceiling, smiling in his power. 

Laughing, Keith turned to run back to the view; he felt if he was away another second it would be lost forever. The castle gave a great roar and swayed beneath his feet. Were they moving even faster? He stumbled across the crazily tilting hall back to the door--

\--and almost gasped again. Lance was leaning against the porch railing, the wind toying with his brown hair, his elegant clothes flapping perfectly against his lanky frame. 

“Hey,” he said, and it was stupid how much of a thrill that single word sent down Keith’s back. “What do you think of the castle?”

“It-it’s magnificent.” Though he tripped on the words, Keith still found himself out on the porch. The air stung his lungs and the sun dazzled his eyes. It was like plunging into a cold lake, like he was seeing clearer yet under some dreamy spell at the same moment, his senses distorted by the water. And what was even stranger was this: Keith was aware of the curse melting away from his body like a shower might wash away grease, but at the same time, he wasn’t. He could feel the youth in his bones, in his neck and his dark hair and strong arms, but some strange clause of the Witch’s magic kept that knowledge from all of his mind. He was in-between and underneath; knowing and unknowing. 

He found his feet taking steps towards Lance. When had he become so brave? Keith took hold of the railing and looked out. He tried his best to drink in the landscape, but it suddenly seemed no more than a backdrop for the boy beside him. 

“Thought you might like it.” There was something behind Lance’s words. Something like,  _ I wanted you to like it.  _ But how was that right? Lance had only met him a day or two ago. It wasn’t as if Lance had made the castle just for him. 

“I do. It’s incredible.”

Keith closed his eyes and took a breath. His heart was hammering. Suddenly he couldn’t think of a thing in the world to talk about. 

“Can I hold you hand?”

What?

The question was so unexpected, so ridiculously out of the blue that Keith thought he had imagined it. Nobody had ever asked to hold his hand before--when would they have?--and now this boy had asked him twice. 

Keith blinked. At any other time in his life he would have frozen up, or stammered, or said something stupid and messed up the moment. But the curious magic of the entire situation seemed to have glossed his mind over, eased out the kinks and stuttering parts. 

“Yes,” he said. 

And then, slowly, impossibly, Lance’s hand reached out and smoothly touched his fingers, spread them out and interlaced his own fingers between them. Keith watched in mute fascination. His body was a lightning storm, an aurora dancing in the clouds amongst a crowd of endless burning stars. Lance was  _ holding his hand _ . Their palms were touching, pressed together. The warmth of Lance’s hand mixed with his own. 

“I was always taught that touching was a powerful form of magic,” Lance said, turning their hands over to study them. “A person’s magic comes from their own energy, did you know that? I don’t just pull all these awesome spells out of my--” He seemed to catch himself. “They don’t come from nowhere. Demons like Coran, they can do a lot more than us normal humans, because they aren’t human.” Lance wasn’t looking at him anymore; he was gazing across the moving land, something strange swimming in his eyes. Keith felt some insane form of jealousy towards the mountains. He wanted Lance to look at  _ him _ again. 

Lance laughed dryly. “I was also taught to fear demons. Isn’t that strange? In one breath we’re told that working together is the most powerful magic there is, and in the next, they tell me that demons, incredible sources of energy, are stupid and horrible and I shouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole.” 

“What about working with people?”

Slowly, like a boy surfacing from a great dive, Lance turned back to Keith. And then he smiled, and Keith’s heart twisted. He would have given anything for the ability to make Lance smile like that whenever he wanted. 

Lance squeezed Keith’s hand and turned it over so that Keith’s knuckles were facing up. A soft blue glow seemed to be flickering from between their intertwined fingers. 

“I’d say that’s pretty powerful too, dude.” 

Keith was entranced by the glow: it lit up Lance’s face in a brilliant shade, and seemed to pulse with his own heartbeat. As if they held a tiny living star between them. 

The moment was shattered by a gigantic  _ thunk _ . Keith turned away from Lance. What on earth had that been? At first he looked down at the rolling fields for the noise, but, failing to find an answer, he scanned the castle. 

“There,” he said, and pointed to a stick lodged between two hunks of metal in the castle’s side. Lance strolled across the porch and grabbed the stick and pulled. It was only as Lance was fighting with the stick that Keith realized that he was no longer holding the wizard’s hand. For the briefest of moments, he felt a profound grief for the death of their tiny star. 

But then Lance won his battle and was rewarded with a scarecrow, tattered suit and hat flapping, wooden pipe sticking out from between teeth painted on a white vegetable. 

“Turnip Head?” Keith squinted. All of a sudden, his vision seemed to be clouding over, sort of fading at the edges. And his legs were shaky, his feet aching. He hobbled over to where Lance stood, studying the strange creature on the pole, one hand on his hip, the other rubbing his chin between thumb and forefinger. 

“You know this guy?”

“Yeah, I saw it out in the Wastes.” Keith felt some awkward urge to introduce Turnip Head to Lance. “It actually led me to the castle. Or the other way around I guess. I think he’s pretty good at finding stuff.” He raised an eyebrow. “It would be cool if it could find itself.”

Lance bent over, hand still on his chin, and looked the scarecrow over from bottom to top. “Hmmm. He’s pretty well covered in some sort of spell. It’s all messed up, though. I can’t tell what the heck he’s supposed to be.” 

“They,” Keith mumbled. 

“What?”

“They. I think he’s a “they”. I mean, I just thought...I didn’t know before, but just now I got the sense that they didn’t feel comfortable with ‘he’? Or ‘it’, either.”

“Huh, alright.” Lance reached out and plucked something from the scarecrow’s arm-pole. “What did they bring you?” 

Keith accepted the object from Lance (their fingers touched. Briefly.), and turned it over. 

“It’s my hat,” he said, feeling slightly guilty. Had Turnip Head really hopped all the way here to give back to him after he had lost it? Man, he really owed them a favor. He looked up at the scarecrow. “Thank you.”

“Is everything around here soaking wet in magic?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Lance brushed off his shirt, took a dramatic breath to sigh with, and turned for the door. “I have some stuff I gotta get done. Your friend can’t come inside though; I have a strict no-outside-magic policy that’s already being bent enough already.” 

“Ok, I won’t let them in.”

Lance made to close the door and then seemed to think better of it. “Oh, and we’ll be stopping soon. I think you’ll like the place. I picked it out for you.” And then with another of his trademark grins, Lance closed the door, leaving Keith’s head wondering. What the heck was that supposed to mean? Better yet, what the heck had just happened? 

Oh man. Oh, holy crap. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Keith thought he had control over himself, and look at him. One stupid boy was all it took to reduce him to a jelly-kneed mess. Hoping hurt to much to keep, he knew that, he  _ knew _ that. 

And yet.

“You can stop your grinning.” Keith rounded on Turnip Head, who was still just standing there. “You’re the nosiest person I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you're having as much fun with the fic as I am, thanks for reading!! Come say hi on my [tumblr](http://www.wuhkie.tumblr.com) :)


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